"CRISIS, TRANSITION, AND RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS: A CONVERSATION WITH IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN."
Appalachian Journal, Spring 1999
This Article Is Copyrighted: When citing this article, be sure to cite the journal in which it is published, not this website.
Perhaps you do not think of Immanuel Wallerstein as an Appalachian scholar, but he is probably the most internationally-renowned intellectual of our region. Since 1976, Wallerstein has been a distinguished professor at Binghamton University. While Wallerstein's workplace may be rooted in Appalachia, it is more appropriate to term him a "world" scholar. These days, everyone accepts the notion of an entity called "the global economy." We must credit Immanuel Wallerstein with the contemporary recognition of that process popularly labelled "globalization." When he published his ground-breaking book (The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, New York: Academic Press, 1974), however, his theoretical conceptualization of the capitalist world-system was considered radical, too deterministic, heretic, and certainly not "normal" sociology. To say that Wallerstein is a prolific publisher is an understatement of his work schedule. In addition to 23 authored and 15 edited books, Wallerstein has published more than 230 articles, including frequent commentaries in activist and Third World periodicals that most U.S. scholars slight. He maintains a rigorous schedule of world-wide travel, speaking engagements, writing, teaching, and dialogue with international intellectuals and activists. Wallerstein spends the first half of his year at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in France. During his half year at Binghamton, he teaches and mentors graduate students, manages the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations, and edits Review, a journal that specializes in world-systems research. In addition, he edits an annual book series, coordinates a yearly world-systems conference, and participates in numerous professional and civic organizations, including his chairmanship of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences and his Presidency of the International Sociological Association from 1994 to 1998. Wallerstein is currently working on the fourth volume of his series about the history of the capitalist world-system which he says will "only bring us up through World War I." So he fully expects that he will produce a fifth volume, possibly a sixth.
I had seen Wallerstein at a distance at many professional meetings, but my personal connections with this scholar did not begin until 1995. Over the protests of University of Tennessee faculty that such a famous scholar would never assist an unknown graduate student, I telephoned him in France to ask him to review the book manuscript that I had submitted to the University of North Carolina Press. I learned my first lesson about the graciousness of this man that day. He agreed to add my project to his busy schedule; six weeks later the review arrived as promised. Since that act of generosity, Wallerstein has been an ardent supporter of my work, at a time when sociology has decided to ignore Appalachia. Over the last few months, I have been a Visiting Professor at Binghamton University, where I have had the opportunity to interact closely with him and with his soul-mate, Beatrice.
There are many academics who claim to comprehend the thinking of Immanuel Wallerstein, but most of those scholars limit their understanding to his theoretical analysis of the relationship between core, semiperiphery and periphery. Out of their own ignorance of the massive body of his writing and teaching, many have erroneously criticized Wallerstein for ignoring resistance and social movements. In contrast, I believe that Wallerstein offers an inspiring message about the empowerment of oppressed peoples and about the creativity of antisystemic movements. For that reason, I directed a good deal of my conversation with him to those aspects of his intellectual work and of his political agenda with which you are probably least familiar.
Wallerstein has a different style and a different arena for his activism from that of Paulo Freire or Myles Horton. Still all three have been committed to the same worldwide movement for justice and equality. In 1987, Paulo Freire, Brazilian activist, and Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Center, "talked a book" (We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, ed. Brenda Bell, John Gaventa and John Peters, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990) together in the mountains. Paulo's wife had just died, and Myles was dying with cancer. As part of his own healing process, Paulo wanted to engage Myles in an extensive dialogue about their experiences and philosophies about movement organization. As I listened to Immanuel's optimism about antisystemic movements, it occurred to me that all three of these thinkers share the same passions for structural change through empowerment of people. As you will see in the highlighted quotes throughout this interview, the dialogue between Myles Horton and Paulo Freire echoed in my head, as I listened to the ideas of Immanuel Wallerstein.
Myles Horton: "Most people don't allow themselves to experiment with ideas, because they assume that they have to fit the system. They say how can I live out these things I believe in within the capitalist system. . . . most people can't think outside the socially approved way of doing things and consequently don't open up their minds to making any kind of discoveries. I think you have to think outside the conventional frameworks."
Why Do the Powerful Demonize Liberation Movements?
Dunaway: The United States has just bombed Iraq again, and our nation cannot seem to develop a foreign policy that can deal adequately with this international problem. The U.S. State Department keeps announcing all over the world that Islamic Fundamentalism will be the West's most dangerous enemy in the 21st century. Is the U.S. designing a new Cold War?
Wallerstein: Islamic Fundamentalism: first we have to discuss what it is. Fundamentalism is not a term that comes from the Islamic religion; it is a term that comes from the Christian religion. Fundamentalism is a theological argument that the Christian churches have moved away from their religious roots, that they have gotten too modernist, and that somehow churches should go back to their fundamentals. In that sense, Islamic movements are making the same kinds of argument. I might point out in passing that there are Protestant and Catholic Fundamentalists, as well as Islamic and Jewish Fundamentalists. There are Hindu Fundamentalists, Buddhist Fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is a modern movement that is going on all over the world, and it has two elements that are important to note. One is a kind of rejection of the enlightenment of modernism as a secular ideology. The other element is actually much more concrete. Almost all these movements concentrate on social welfare, on little people who are somehow neglected by public institutions. These fundamentalists substitute for the state, then, to provide all kinds of services and support to their neglected or oppressed members.
Dunaway: Since it is not particularly different from the other forms of religious fundamentalism, why do Americans single out the Islamic variety?
Wallerstein: It is important to examine why the U.S. feels threatened by Islamic Fundamentalism and not by the other forms of this theological shift. You can't understand Islamic Fundamentalism unless you realize that it is a "replacement movement" for the type of failed liberation movement that preceded it in earlier decades. In the Islamic countries, as in many other parts of the world in the last hundred years, there have been all these movements which we call generically "national liberation movements." These movements set the goal of taking over their state structures in order to change conditions, whereby the people would become much more equal to the rest of the world. After these movements (like Nasserism in the Middle East) came to power, people became fundamentally disillusioned because the situation didn't get better. Movement leaders sold out or were incapable of solving the problems which caused the dissatisfaction in the first place. So people turned against these popular movements as failures. The Islamic Movement has avoided such failure by taking a different path from the national liberation movements. They reject the idea of organizing a movement that will put their leaders in state power, focusing instead on culture, religious ideals, and ground-level support for ordinary people.
Dunaway: It seems very odd for the U.S. to demonize such a popular movement when this country evolved from its own liberation movement. What are the long-range implications of a foreign policy that demonizes Islam?
Wallerstein: From the Western governments' point of view, Third World movements, like Islamism, are easy things to demonize. So we engage in this big game of demonizing these movements without analyzing their strengths or the motives of their followers. Why does the U.S. need demons? Precisely because we have lost the other demon, the communist demon. Let me remind you that communism collapsed for the same reasons that the national liberation movements failed. Communism didn't solve the problems that they said they were going to solve. Through its foreign policy, the U.S. demonizes such liberation movements because there is very little we can do about them, like our series of conflicts with Iraq. I certainly do not think that the major problem of the 21st century is Islamic Fundamentalism. In the end, U.S. rhetoric about Islam doesn't really change attitudes in other parts of the world, which is the ostensible motivation of its propaganda. However, such demonization has a function for internal U.S. politics. It prevents U.S. citizens from understanding what is really going on. Moreover, such propaganda diverts attention from real political and economic inequities in the world.
Dunaway: What does U.S. ineptitude toward Iraq tell us about the position of the United States in the capitalist world-system?
Wallerstein: I think the U.S. already has lost its hegemonic control over the world, that is, it has ceased to be the dominant economic and political power in the world. If you mean by hegemony really being on top, really being able to snap your fingers and get your way, then the U.S. hasn't had that for twenty years, and its world standing is going down very rapidly, I think. Let's examine an obvious indicator of this loss of hegemony. The U.S. is the strongest military power in the world, but it can't use its military. Let's take the most recent instance: Iraq. This is December 23, 1998; we've just bombed Iraq. What does all that mean? It doesn't mean any real change. The fact is that the U.S. military, which is the strongest force in the world, cannot be used. Why can't it be used? Because the U.S. military establishment says that they don't want to use the military unless they have public opinion behind them. If I were a general, I might feel the same way. The U.S. public wants its military to win all these victories, but it doesn't want to lose any lives, and it doesn't want to spend its money on such ventures. So if you don't want to lose any lives and you don't want to spend any money, your country is restricted to doing what the U.S. military has just done in Iraq-- drop some bombs that have minor impact upon those you're dropping them on, and that's it. At the end of it, Saddam Hussein can thumb his nose and say, well, "I've had a victory." Saddam has indeed had a victory because, in fact, as a result of this military action, he won't have United Nations inspectors. Economic sanctions will probably be lifted six months earlier than Iraq would otherwise have gotten that relief. So what's the victory for the U.S.? There is no U.S. victory in that. If the U.S. wanted to have a real military victory, it would have to send troops into Baghdad and occupy the place. That would be a messy operation that would involve a heavy loss of lives and money, and such an action would keep us in there for many years. In addition, a whole mess in the Middle East would result from it. But the U.S. public does not want to do that. But, if you don't want to do that, then you can't control Saddam Hussein, a reality that Saddam Hussein understands. I say that the U.S. has already lost its hegemony when it can't handle a Saddam Hussein, and Saddam Hussein knows that the U.S. can't handle him.
Why Is the World Economy Restructuring?
Dunaway: Many experts claim that the world-economy is restructuring itself, as the richest core nations shift manufacturing and heavy industry to other parts of the world. Why is the core restructuring in this way?
Wallerstein: The capitalist world-system always does restructure itself. That is to say, the name of the game is maximizing the accumulation of capital. Whenever an industry or economic sector can be relatively monopolized, everybody tries to enter that field. After thirty, forty or fifty years, lots of capitalists have entered the field. At that point, it is no longer profitable, so it moves down the economic pecking order, so to speak.
Dunaway: Can you think of an economic example that might have impacted Appalachian communities?
Wallerstein: Let's take something everybody knows: steel. West Virginia unions are now trying to resist job losses in the steel industry. Fifty or seventy-five years ago, steel was highly profitable because it was relatively monopolized. So lots of companies entered the field. Now, from a core point of view, steel is not as profitable as it used to be, and the core countries are getting out of it. Core steel plants are closing, so they can re-open in places like Korea or India where they can secure cheaper laborers and resources. That's fine for people in Korea and India because it is better than what they have had. For the people who have been working in steel plants in the United States, or in Germany, or in France or even in Japan, it's pretty rough. From a world point of view, all that means is that steel is no longer a highly monopolized industry. Now core monopolistic profits lie somewhere else: in biotechnology or in computers. Monopolies are what make it possible to create enormous profits, but they only last for a certain period of time. Monopolies are self-destructive. Because they are so profitable, everybody wants to get into them; then profits drop, and countries have to get into something else. This has been the story for 500 years, nothing new. People in the core notice this latest evidence because they do not have the entire history of the capitalist world-system in mind.
Is the U.S. in Hegemonic Decline?
Dunaway: Multinational corporations have already shifted more than three-quarters of their manufacturing jobs outside the U.S., and this type of decentralization is likely to continue into the 21st century. Appalachian communities, like Binghamton, have been especially hard-hit by plant closings and by downsizing. What advice do you have for Appalachian communities that are confronting such crises?
Wallerstein: I can't say to these communities that there is any way that their remaining industries are likely to stay. They aren't. Those that haven't gone yet will go. So what do they do? They can yell. I think yelling doesn't hurt. Their collective resistance may force the state structures to reallocate material and monetary resources. Such communities might try to identify new economic niches, but they need to realize that every desperate economic survival strategy will only be short-lived. There is no long-term solution. When a community is in decline because industries are moving elsewhere, there is no magic remedy for its dilemma. But these communities have every right to yell for a fairer shake. They helped to create the world surplus, and it has been taken from them. Appalachians have moral claims on part of that world surplus, and these communities have got to assert those moral claims loudly and collectively.
Dunaway: Is the entire United States in economic decline?
Wallerstein: Obviously, the U.S. is in decline. Look, the U.S. is the richest country in the world today, so it can live on its wealth for quite awhile. It's like being very fat. When a person is in ill health, the fat begins to come off. A country as wealthy as the U.S. can be in decline for a hundred years and live very well. But, yes, the U.S. is in relative economic decline in the sense that there are now more efficient producers elsewhere. Relative to the U.S., these other countries have been coming up in the world-economy for twenty years. In terms of the gross world product it controlled, the U.S. was at its height in the 1960s. What's been happening since the 1960s is that western Europe and Japan have become more efficient, so they are closing in economically on the U.S. In the next twenty to forty years, their greater efficiency will be reflected in economic growth that surpasses the U.S. One of the things that makes the U.S. inefficient is perfectly typical for a leading country. The U.S. spends too much not on its workers, but on its cadres.
Dunaway: Who are the "cadres" you mention?
Wallerstein: I mean by cadres all those people who manage the capitalist system and its institutions without being at the very top, referred to as "new middle classes," by some writers. The top is a very small group, say no more than 1 percent of the world's population, but there is a larger middle group who also do quite well in the system. Cadres comprise only about 10 percent of the world's population, but 30 to 35 percent of U.S. households fall into this category. They are the upper middle class professionals and middle-level managers who form an intermediate stratum between workers and top executives or owners. Cadres are largely salaried professionals who occupy managerial or quasi-managerial positions in corporate or government structures. So what I am saying is that the U.S. spends far more on these middle class managers than it does on workers.
Dunaway: Are you saying that these middle managers can become an economic drain on a country's economy?
Wallerstein: These middle managers of the U.S. are more enormous in number and in their consumption of total world product than their equivalents in western Europe or Japan. Maintaining such a large middle class in the U.S. is expensive and cuts into the productivity of our industries. In addition, wealth and economic assets are concentrated into the hands of the richest economic elites who comprise only 1 or 2 percent of the population. The combined effect of elite wealth concentration and high social subsidies for middle cadres drives up production costs. Eventually, U.S. products can't compete as well as products from the other core countries. The U.S. has reached this critical point in the world economy. In twenty to forty years, that economic crisis will be even more painful, as corporations try to become more competitive by eliminating costly middle managers, and government programs are cut to lower social expenditures.
Dunaway: How do working people feel this economic decline in the U.S.?
Wallerstein: Economic decline is already evident in the sense that the income of average Americans and of the working poor is, in fact, lower than it was twenty years ago. Their real purchasing power will go down even further over the next two decades. At the same time, the people in the upper echelons, the richest 10 or 15 percent of the U.S., are doing extremely well.
Dunaway: Are workers in other core nations feeling the same degree of economic strain as U.S. working households?
Wallerstein: While American workers are feeling the crunch, the average income in western Europe is more stable. They have a welfare state that assures them a minimal living, education and health care. Even though western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the U.S. over the last two decades, people in those countries still live a lot better than U.S. citizens. Just this week in France, there is a strike of the unemployed to demand a raise in their government benefits, and the strikers will probably win. But that is a very different political situation. The U.S. touts its lower unemployment rates, but we are not recognizing that a lot of people are employed at lower wage levels than they were twenty years ago. We are in a kind of fool's paradise, at the moment. But I think the U.S. is going to come in for very strong economic difficulties in the next ten years.
Dunaway: What is the new pecking order of rich core nations likely to be in the early 21st century?
Wallerstein: Let's look at the past history of how the capitalist world-system has worked. When a hegemonic power declines, there have always been two potential powers ready to take over. This time, western Europe and Japan are the rivals out front. I think Japan will do better than western Europe, and I think the U.S. will link up with Japan. I would predict that thirty or forty years from now, Japan will be on top, and the United States will be its sort of junior partner. Western Europe will have lost out in this core rivalry. Despite what's happened the last couple of years, Japan looks extremely strong to me economically. But the early 21st century is not going to be like previous hegemonic transitions. The world-system is currently in a crisis that won't allow a "normal" shift in the pecking order of the world-economy. Thirty or forty years from now, the entire system will be restructured into something new, so the world-economy will be operating differently.
Crisis and the Demise of the Capitalist World-system
Dunaway: Most of the people of the world live in poverty, without minimal levels of sanitation and health care. Do you see any hope that conditions will improve for the Third World in the 21st century?
Wallerstein: Within the framework of the existing system, I don't see hope for improvement. Conditions will actually get worse every year. The polarization of the world is on the steady increase. We do not feel the world's misery in the United States. We don't observe it because things are getting better all the time for the top 15 or 20 percent of the world. That top global echelon includes maybe half the people in the United States. So many Americans keep saying, "gee, we're doing well," while most of the people of the world are doing worse. The rich West keeps promising the poor countries that international trade is the solution to their problems. The "free market" can no more transform the economic prospects of the poorer 75 percent of the world's populations than taking vitamins can cure leukemia. The promise of economic growth and improvement is a fake, and the damage is already done to the Third World.
Myles Horton: "I was helped by some of the things I learned from Marxism about analysis and about the practical use of the whole business of conflict. . . . That was the basis of finally deciding that I was going to work with poor people, working people. That's the basis of deciding if I was going to side with what we later started calling Third World countries."
Dunaway: Western media, economists and politicians are optimistic about growth and expansion of the global economy as we move into the 21st century. Why have you predicted the demise of the capitalist world-system within the next fifty years?
Wallerstein: There are certain problems in the existing system which are leading to a major structural crisis. That crisis is such that I could say, fairly authoritatively, that in twenty to forty years, we will be living in a very different kind of system. This system cannot go on because it's got contradictions which are reaching a point that they can't be resolved. The system is based on a ceaseless accumulation of capital, and that accumulation process is now being seriously threatened. There are a series of developments which have undermined the basic structures of the capitalist world-economy and therefore have created a crisis situation. The first of these is the deruralization of the world. Two hundred years ago, 80 percent or more of the world's population was rural. By now, the rural population is less than 30 percent. Well, so what? The major mechanism by which capitalists have maintained relatively low wages worldwide is that there have always been new rural people to pull into the wage labor force. By world standards, these new workers entered the labor force at incredibly low wages, but it seemed like an economic improvement to those workers for the first few decades. Then the workers cotton on to what is going on, they become politically more conscious, and they begin to demand higher wages. So this system works very well so long as we've got new people to migrate, but the system is running out of new rural areas from which to draw cheap laborers. So I see a secular increase in the percentage of total world value that is going to the work force, and that is cutting into profit levels, thereby threatening accumulation of capital by the system. To recapitulate, the deruralization of the world has virtually eliminated the traditional compensatory mechanism of opening up new primary production zones, and, therefore, the worldwide cost of labor will rise to the detriment of capital accumulation.
Dunaway: Isn't environmental degradation also linked to deruralization? And do you see ecological threats to the continued existence of the existing world-system?
Wallerstein: That is indeed the second dangerous crisis I see unfolding. One of the ways in which capitalists make money is that they don't pay their bills. One of the things they do is that they create problems and don't pay for them. For example, they engage in activities which pollute. They haven't paid for that. The states permit it in effect, and it saves capitalists a lot of money. Or they destroy resources without replacing them. They cut down forests, but they don't replant trees because that costs too much money. So that is what I mean by not paying their bills. Economists have fancy language for this; it is called "externalizing costs." Capitalists can engage in such practices so long as there are resources out there that they can exploit, but there comes a point when there are no more trees to cut down or streams to pollute. The capitalist world-system has reached that point. That's why we have a worldwide ecology movement that yells and screams where you didn't have it 200 years.
Dunaway: Is there any way to reverse this environmental crisis and thereby salvage the current economic system?
Wallerstein: What can capitalists do about the fact that resources are getting scarce? Well, they could pay to restore things. The bill, however, is absolutely incredible. It is a very big bill to alleviate all this damage. Furthermore, there is no point in undoing all the damage unless the system can take steps not to repeat its past destructive patterns. The amount of money we are talking about is enormous, so who would pay to undo such ecological damage? We might ask the states to pay for it, and then you would question, who would they tax? Taxpayers are already screaming that we are overtaxed. If we taxed the capitalists who are causing the problems, they would say, "but we won't make profits." It is true, they won't make profits in such a situation. Suppose we say to capitalists, "no more externalizing costs." We could pass laws that might force them to internalize all their costs. Then capitalists will say: "profit squeeze!" True! The profit squeeze is the most insoluble problem of the current system. On the one hand, capitalists are experiencing a profit squeeze from the slow growth of real wages, with the decline of new rural people to pull in as very cheap labor. Then there is the second profit squeeze from the real expenses associated with capitalists being forced to pay for their free ride from the externalization of costs. The world faces the choice of ecological disaster or of forcing the internalization of costs. But forcing the internalization of costs threatens seriously the ability to accumulate capital.
Myles Horton: "You can't have an individual right. It has to be a universal right. I have no rights that everybody else doesn't have. There's no right I could claim that anybody else in the world can't claim, and I have to fight for their exercising that right just like I have to fight for my own."
Dunaway: What is the third dilemma that you think will cause a major crisis in the current system?
Wallerstein: Capitalists are also feeling the impact of a third squeeze. The third squeeze comes from the democratization of the world. What are people demanding? Ordinary people have three basic claims: they want more education, they want more health services, and they want more guaranteed life income. If you look at legislation over the last two hundred years, the demand level for these human needs has been going up slowly all over the world. So the costs for these basic human needs are going up. Who is going to pay? Obviously, the costs are retrieved through a taxation system of one variety or another, and these costs act as a drain on the worldwide accumulation of capital. So I see three basic squeezes on profits that are very serious structural processes that are not being reversed. What we call neoliberalism is an attempt to reverse these trends, but it has not been spectacularly successful. The reversal of social expenditures is very hard to achieve because such changes trigger a storm of popular resistance, like the clamor of U.S. citizens against Congressional reform of Social Security.
Structural Crisis and Antisystemic Movements
Dunaway: The fourth dilemma that you identify as an indicator
of structural crisis is linked to popular resistance movements. Explain that idea.
Wallerstein: People will think this is curious when I say it, but I add one more element which is really undermining the system. That is the failure of 20th century antisystemic movements.
Dunaway: I think one of your most intriguing ideas is this notion. What is an antisystemic movement?
Wallerstein: I use the term "antisystemic movements" to include the two principal types of popular movements of the last 100 to 150 years. On the one hand, there are the social movements (trade-unions, socialist parties, etc.) that emphasized class struggle within countries. On the other hand, there are the nationalist or national liberation movements which emphasized the struggle of dominated or colonized peoples for their independence. Both kinds of movements said they were for equality and were against the existing system which they found oppressive, and thus they were antisystemic. They claimed their object was to create another, better system.
Dunaway: Why do you think such movements are so important in the world?
Wallerstein: There has existed no other force for human liberation. If past antisystemic movements did not achieve human liberation, they at least reduced some human suffering and held the banner high for an alternative vision of the world.
Dunaway: Rationally, it would seem that movement failures would benefit the system, rather than threaten its continued existence. Why would you say that the failure of antisystemic movements is a crisis for the current system?
Wallerstein: In the last 150 years, antisystemic movements-- the socialist movements, the communist movements, the national liberation movements-- were spectacularly successful and spectacularly unsuccessful. When they started out, more or less in the middle of the nineteenth century, most of these movements were very weak in their origins. At the beginning, few people supported them, and they were easily repressed. Over time, however, they grew stronger and stronger and stronger. Between 1945 and 1970, these movements-- which had been so weak historically-- took state power almost everywhere. One-third of the world had communist governments. A third of the world had national liberation movements in power. The western world basically had social democratic movements either in power or alternating power with more conservative parties (but even conservative parties at this time accepted the idea of the welfare state).
It was a great achievement that these movements came to power. After they came to power, however, the world seemed to be only mildly different from what it had been. These movements did not seem to end poverty; they didn't seem to end nondemocratic governments. So there was an enormous disillusionment. Over the last two or three decades, there has been a process of disillusionment with these movements, the so-called Old Left. I think 1968 is symbolic of the beginning expression of that disillusionment. I consider 1989 as the culmination of that disillusionment with these movements. The 1989 collapse of the communist states in eastern Europe was celebrated by western conservatives as a triumph. But actually, it was terrible for the capitalist world-system. Upon coming to power, all these movements had immediately adopted a basically reformist agenda. They argued that the priority was for them to stay in power. So they argued that ordinary people should support them, have faith in them, and be patient, on the grounds that in time these movements in power would bring about a better world, gradually but certainly, under the guidance of the leadership. So I see them as a stabilizing power because they sat on the adventurous leftism of the masses. Now when you remove these people from power, what you eliminate is the control that was sitting on the disgruntled masses on behalf of the capitalist system-- even though those movements had claimed to be antisystemic.
Myles Horton: "It doesn't make a great deal of difference what the people are; if they're in the system, they're going to function like the system dictates they function." (p. 103)
Dunaway: Can you explain just a bit more explicitly why failure of past antisystemic movements is a crisis that can contribute to the death of the existing world-system?
Wallerstein: The collapse of the Old Left, of the traditional antisystemic movements, is not a plus for the capitalist system, but its greatest danger. De facto, those movements served as a guarantee for the existing system, in that they assured the world's dangerous classes that the future was theirs, that a more egalitarian world was on the horizon-- if not for them, then for their children. Thereby, these movements legitimated both optimism and patience. In the last twenty years, popular faith in these movements (in all their varieties) has disintegrated, which means that their ability to channel angers has disappeared. Since all these movements had preached the virtues of strengthening the state structures (in order to transform the system), faith in such reformist states has also declined radically. This is the last thing that defenders of the present system really want, despite their anti-state rhetoric. In fact, accumulators of capital depend on the state to guarantee them economic monopolies and to repress anarchistic tendencies of the "dangerous classes." We are seeing today a decline in the strength of state structures everywhere in the world, which means rising insecurity. The excluded South will become politically far more restive than at present, and the level of global disorder will increase markedly.
Summary: The Impending Crisis
Paulo Freire: "It is a time of confrontation, this transition, the time of transition of the old society to a new one that does not exist yet. . . . There are many ghosts in society fighting against the dream of a much more open society." (p. 218)
Dunaway: Can you briefly summarize for us the impending crisis of the current capitalist system?
Wallerstein: I see four major dilemmas that have been growing for hundreds of years and have now reached the crisis point. There are three irreversible structural crises that are putting real pressures on global profits-- thereby threatening the accumulation of capital that propels the existing system. On top of that, disillusionment with 20th century movements has caused the elimination of a safety valve that once protected the system. The failures of communism, socialism, and national liberation movements means the removal of the major political mechanism that kept the lid on the pot of world grievances. Because of these four structural contradictions, the capitalist world-system has reached a major crisis. You can rest assured that those who have privilege will not sit back and watch their privilege and power go under without trying to rescue it. But you can also rest assured that they cannot rescue world capitalism by adjusting the system once again, for all the reasons I have adduced. The world is in transition. Out of chaos will come a new order, different from the one we now know.
Historical Transition and Resistance Movements
Dunaway: You have said previously that "it is precisely in periods of transition from one historical system to another one that human struggle takes on the most meaning." What do you mean?
Wallerstein: When a system functions "normally," as the capitalist world-system functioned for several hundred years, people could push and pull, but those actions would only have limited effect. That has been one of the problems with the current system. People have pushed and pulled pretty hard for the last 200 years. Since their struggle has only had limited effect, most of the people of the world are very disillusioned. When a system is in crisis, however, it fluctuates incredibly, and it becomes very unstable. So a little push here and a little push there really has tremendous effect. You can say that is an optimistic way of looking at the future. I put it in terms of that old western distinction between determinism and free will. When a system is in normal operation, we can say that the system heavily determines our lives. But when it is in crisis, there is much more space for operation of the free will. It is only in such times of transition that what we call free will outweighs the pressures of the existing system to return to equilibria.
Paulo Freire: "I am not naively optimistic, idealistic, but I am critically optimistic. . . . the radical transformation of society is a process. . . . It takes time in history to make history. You cannot make it today, but the change comes up in all directions and dimensions of the life of society." (pp. 216-17)
Dunaway: In a 1997 speech, you said: "The first half of the 21st century will, I believe, be far more difficult, more unsettling, and yet more open, than anything we have known in the 20th century." Even though you expect the collapse of the capitalist world-system, you are optimistic enough to believe that this uncertainty can be a wondrous time for human resistance. How can grassroots movements use this impending turmoil and uncertainty?
Wallerstein: Uncertainty is wondrous. If we were certain of the future, there could be no more compulsion to do anything. During the next twenty to forty years, movements can do a lot-- if we do something! It is going to be difficult; there are things to be afraid of. That is, everything is up for grabs. On the other hand, it is more open in the sense that change could go in any direction. Also activists are no longer prisoners of their self-inflicted ideologies and analyses the way they have been for 150 years. Now movements can all talk about and play with alternative historical possibilities in a way that they were not ready to do in the past. This is not only true of movements and politics in the ordinary sense, but it is also true at the level of ideas. In that sense, it is more open if we seize the possibility. The present world-system is going to collapse. We're going to replace it with something else. What design that new system takes will be a function of what we collectively do in the way of intelligent reflection about alternate future possibilities and what we collectively do in the way of organized resistance. Antisystemic resistance matters! It matters now what our struggles will be!
Goals and Strategies of Antisystemic Movements
Dunaway: What should be the mission of antisystemic movements over the next twenty years?
Wallerstein: I can set the goals in very broad terms, but the difficulty lies in determining how we make those ideals concrete. The mission is clear: we want to build a relatively egalitarian, relatively democratic world. We've been moving in the opposite direction for centuries. Certainly, the gap between rich and poor nations is wider today than ever before in the history of the world. So our movement mission is to guide the world in the other direction. How do we translate that institutionally? Not an easy question! Whatever our movement decisions, however, one structural goal is essential, if we are to effect any real change in the world. We must get away from the idea that the endless accumulation of capital is a virtue. We must collectively make different decisions about the rational allocation of our energies and our resources. Movements must keep these issues constantly open to discussion and debate. Now what kinds of institutions should handle these structural arrangements? Part of me says decentralize a lot of things. Part of me says that locals are not necessarily more democratic than larger structures. We have to use a lot of imagination and think about the world in ways that may not come easy to us. I have enough confidence in collective intelligence and collective rationality to believe that movements can construct workable egalitarian institutions-- if we debate the crucial structural issues at great length over the next two decades.
Myles Horton: "If I had to put a finger on what I consider a good education, a good radical education, it wouldn't be anything about methods or techniques. It would be loving people first. If you don't do that, Che Guevara says, there's no point in being a revolutionary. I agree with that. And that means all people everywhere, not just your family or your own countrymen or your own color. And wanting for them what you want for yourself. And then next is respect for people's abilities to learn and to act and to shape their own lives. You have to have confidence that people can do that." (p. 177)
Dunaway: You have said in a 1996 speech that 21st century resistance movements must not replicate past mistakes. You believe that the basic problem of 20th century antisystemic movements lay in their fundamental strategy. What was their most important mistake?
Wallerstein: The fundamental past strategy was what was called the "two-stage theory." The first goal was for the movement to achieve state power. Then once it had achieved state power, its ideal was to transform the world. Earlier in our discussion I described the disillusionment that has resulted from the failure of movements that did achieve state power. Once movements get state power, they must play by certain rules, or they get thrown out of political participation. So they get unintentionally co-opted or redirected away from their organizing mission. Moreover, this strategy fails because states have limited power; they are constrained by the operations of the capitalist world-system in which they function. This two-stage strategy was doomed to go so far, and then to fail. Today we have learned that lesson, and we know that movements can't repeat it.
Myles Horton: I chose to work with organizations that, as far as I could tell, had a potential, a potential for structural reforms to lead to social movements and to lead to revolutionary change. I was always looking for organizations that were not aimed at reinforcing the system but aimed at changing the system. . . . I selected people who had a potential for providing leadership for structural change and who had a vision of a different future."
Dunaway: If movements no longer follow the strategy of using state power to achieve social change, what is the more effective strategy for the early 21st century?
Wallerstein: One of the striking things about the movements of the last two decades is that they are not oriented toward the two-stage theory of how to change the world. It doesn't mean that activists don't want to vote or that they don't care about who is in government. Political action matters, but it matters only in a tactical way. It no longer matters in a fundamental way. Voting X group into power anywhere in the world is not going to change the world. So we've got to worry about more fundamental approaches, and that is what all of us need to be discussing. The substitute for the strategy of using state power is not self-evident. There seems to be widespread agreement that this strategy didn't work and shouldn't be repeated. But what should we substitute for it? I am not sure I have the answer. The search for an alternate strategy is the central issue that the world Left must debate right now.
Myles Horton: "I know that if we're going to move in the direction of radical social change, we've got to take a step further. . . . can we move another stage beyond just thinking it's a wonderful idea and be willing to make sacrifices? . . . I don't have any fear that it won't take place. . . . A movement can change people." (pp. 223-25)
Dunaway: Are there strategies you think will work?
Wallerstein: The strategy of mobilizing simultaneously at multiple levels-- local, state, worldwide-- is quite important. It is crucial to keep going a continuous mobilization of people around issues that really matter to them-- alongside ongoing constant discussion that keeps focused on the most significant underlying structural indicators. Let's look at a very current example: the bombing of Iraq. The inquiry centers around whether Clinton took this action in order to affect the impeachment hearings. There are more crucial questions that concerned activists should be discussing. We should be asking: Does it make any sense to bomb Iraq rather than pursue other alternatives? What is the real hidden issue here? What I am suggesting is that movements seeking change must keep focused upon the fundamental polarization and inequality of the world-system. That structural reality underlies the whole business of Iraq-- and every other dilemma facing us today. Why are we preoccupied with the few weapons of mass destruction owned by Iraq when the U.S. holds the vast majority of the world's weapons of mass destruction? Why are we not investigating and destroying our own supplies of such dangerous weapons? What is special about the few "weapons of mass destruction" that Iraq may have?
Dunaway: So activist groups need to be asking: Why is the world-system constructed in such a way that the U.S. is allowed to have weapons of mass destruction, but not Iraq or India or Pakistan?
Wallerstein: What I am saying with these examples is this. Antisystemic movements cannot change the world for the better unless they remain sharply critical of the economic agendas that the dominant powers keep hidden from them and do not want them to see about issues like these.
Paulo Freire: "Having a certain scientific understanding of how the structures of society work, I can go beyond the common-sense understanding of how the society works." (p. 101)
Dunaway: How should antisystemic movements organize their resistance in order to be more effective in the early 21st century?
Wallerstein: For those of us who think the world should be more egalitarian and more democratic, the major problem is that, collectively, the world Left is depressed by its past failures. On the other hand, activists these days are ready to experiment with many more strategies because they are less often engaged in jockeying about "my claims are greater than your claims, my suffering greater than yours." Still, movements need to do a lot more talking to each other, collectively, worldwide, and I emphasize the global focus. It is terribly important that change agendas be worldwide, and that movements be open to diversity. What we need to design is a global "Rainbow Coalition," that is, a confederation of many little movements, representing all kinds of particular grievances, a vast loosely connected movement without a single organizing theme.
Myles Horton: "Another thing that we started out talking about during the very first pre-Highlander days was that we would be international. We were part of the world but we had to start locally. That has been coming in and out of Highlander's history all along, and now it's playing a bigger role because Highlander's much more Third World-conscious." (p.179)
Dunaway: How do movements get past their differences and frictions?
Wallerstein: What is important is to have a clear analysis of what went wrong with our strategies in the past and a willingness to argue through alternatives, with each other, in a friendly manner. I think the Old Left was terribly, terribly fanatic. If you deviated from the line a little bit, you were the immediate enemy, and I think we have just got to end that completely. The battle does not lie between Stalinists and Trotskyites, as though there were no other ideological possibilities. I think we've gone a long way toward ending that kind of friction. We've got to remember that the enemy is on the other side. The family of world antisystemic movements is comprised of many committed groups moving in directions which they each see from the social-biographical standpoints from which they come. These groups represent different communities with different histories, different grievances, different immediate problems. The challenge for these groups is somehow to design a joint action by combining those differences into strengths. These groups must try to talk to each other in depth and in sympathy, in order to try to collaborate about real historical alternatives for the future.
Paulo Freire: "Conflicts are the midwife of consciousness." (p. 187)
Dunaway: Do you have any other practical strategy advice for movements?
Wallerstein: Take literally the myths of the powerful about political and economic "liberalism." That is absolutely the last thing the dominant forces want you to do. For example, demand the "free" market they claim to want to operate without government interference. That would mean no more subsidies for businesses, no tax breaks for corporations, no legal restrictions on labor, nothing! If corporate elites want free migration of populations for cheap labor forces, fine. Open the borders, and make them pay the costs! If we took all these promises literally, it would create tremendous difficulty for capitalists. To laborers, I say: always ask for more money. Demand your real rights under the laws. Don't be reasonable. You may have to accept a compromise at some point, but demand more. Push! Push! Push! Push the frontiers of the official ideology, and you will be surprised how fast the dominant forces will retreat from their official ideologies. In general, I say call the bluff of official liberalism by saying, let's have it, let's really have the mythological ideology that is being promised! Those in power claim to be a democracy? Demand that they operate like a real democracy. Let's look at the current Clinton impeachment, as an example. The anti-Clinton forces say Congress is not supposed to pay attention to public opinion polls because the public is flighty. That doesn't fit with democratic ideology.
What Will the New World Order Be?
Dunaway: If the capitalist world-system grinds to a halt by 2030, as you have predicted, what will replace it?
Wallerstein: We cannot know for sure. Progress may be possible, but it is by no means inevitable. My own reading of the past 500 years leads me to doubt that our modern world-system is an instance of substantial moral progress, and that it is more probably an instance of moral regression. That does not render me innately pessimistic about the future, just sober. I do not accept that progress is impossible. The world has not morally advanced in the last several thousand years, but it could. We can move in the direction of what Max Weber called "substantive rationality," that is, rational values and rational ends, arrived at collectively and intelligently. I cannot say whether the new system we will be living in will be better or worse. I cannot predict what we will have because these next three decades will be very messy politically. When people turn against the state-- and people have now turned against the state everywhere-- things get pretty dicey. This takes the form of an increased sense of personal insecurity, all over the world. Everybody tells you the last five years have been the worst; I expect they will tell us that for the next 25 years. So we keep looking back nostalgically to a time when things were "better." What do people do in such an uncertain time? Rich powerful intelligent people try to design a new kind of system that will keep them on top. I am not sure what kind of system that is, but I do know that rich elites are thinking about it. They have money, and their agenda is to salvage the existing system from the mess, to come out with a new system that has a new name and a few new attributes-- but it would still be an inegalitarian system in which a few elites are still privileged. Now if you don't want that, then you have to fight for alternatives. We are in a systemic bifurcation, which means that very small actions by groups here and there may shift the institutional forms in radically different directions. It is unlikely that the present historical system will last too much longer. But what will replace it? It could be another structure that is basically similar, or it could be a structure that is radically different. It might be a single structure over all the same geographic area, or it could be multiple structures in different parts of the globe.
Designing the New World Order
Paulo Freire: "If you don't do something today, you become an obstacle for hundreds of people not yet born. Their action in the next century depends on our actions today. . . . Those who come tomorrow will start acting, precisely taking what we did as the starting point. This is how history can be made. . . . We are now dealing with the present in order to create the future." (pp. 190-91)
Dunaway: What are your goals for the new world order that would emerge after the demise of the existing system?
Wallerstein: We do not yet know what that new system should look like in structural terms. Still we can lay out the criteria on the basis of which we could call an historical system substantively rational. It is a system that is largely egalitarian and largely democratic. Far from seeing any conflict between these two objectives, I would argue that they are intrinsically linked to each other. An historical system cannot be egalitarian if it is not democratic. An undemocratic system is one that distributes power unequally, and this means that it will also distribute material wealth unevenly. And a system cannot be democratic if it is not egalitarian. An inegalitarian system is one in which a few control much more of the material means than the majority and, therefore, inevitably those few will have more political power.
Myles Horton: "My vision was clarified politically during the Depression when we were faced with capitalism coming apart. There was a socialist alternative and a fascist alternative, an authoritarian and a democratic alternative. . . . I believe in democracy versus authoritarianism. That hasn't changed. What has changed is an understanding of the capitalist system. If you're going to change a system, you have to understand it." (p. 196)
Dunaway: Are you optimistic? Will antisystemic movements overcome their past failures, come together globally, and design an action plan for a more equitable world order?
Wallerstein: I am moderately optimistic that we shall rise to the challenge. We are faced today, as we have been faced at other points of demise of historical systems, with historic choices, in which our individual and collective inputs will make a real difference in terms of the outcome. Today's moment of choice is, however, in one way different than previous such moments. It is the first one in which the entire globe is implicated, since the historical system in which we live is the first one that encompasses the entire globe.
Paulo Freire: "I began to read Marx and to read about Marx, and the more I did the more I became convinced that we really would have to change the structures of reality, that we should become absolutely committed to a global process of transformation." (p. 246)
We are amidst a bifurcation of our system. The fluctuations are enormous, and little pushes will determine which way the process moves. The task of the liberation movements is to take serious stock of the crisis of the system, the impasse of their past strategy, and the force of the genie of world popular discontent which has been unleashed precisely by the collapse of old movements. Fundamental change and progress are possible, albeit not inevitable. That very uncertainty makes claims on our moral responsibility to act rationally, in good faith, and with strength to seek a better historical system. This is a moment for utopistics, that is, for intensive, rigorous analysis of historical alternatives.
Myles Horton: "You have to tie the practical with the visionary." (p. 177)
Conclusion
Immanuel Wallerstein and I finished this conversation a few days before Christmas 1998. The place, Binghamton, had been the scene of two decades of industrial decline, marked by plant closings and drastic labor force downsizing. The world-economy continued to tremble from the after-shocks of the Asian financial crisis, evidenced by events like riots in Indonesia and the bailout of Brazil by the International Monetary Fund. The United States had bombed Iraq again. Congress had just impeached the President. Several corporations announced their lean and mean policies to terminate nearly 36,000 before New Years Day, bringing to 610,529 the number of U.S. workers who had lost their jobs in 1998. There was something about the ominous conjuncture of these events that brought home to me powerfully Wallerstein's predictions of impending economic crisis.
The holiday season itself triggered in my memory Isaiah's (7: 14) prophecy of the coming of the Messiah. Isaiah (7: 16-17) followed that joyous proclamation with the warning that "desolation will come upon the land" and that the people would endure "a time the like of which has not been seen." Like Isaiah, Immanuel Wallerstein warns that we are about to enter two to three decades of turmoil, uncertainty, and difficulty. He does not spoon feed us what we want to hear, like many of our politicians. The current system is grinding to a halt, he warns, even if we cannot hear every one of its desperate gasps.
One cannot take fully the measure of a persons's humanity or grace in an interview, but this long talk surely deepened my respect for Wallerstein's commitment to end worldwide oppression and inequality. To my amazement, I discovered during this conversation that Immanuel is just as optimistic about the future as were Paulo Freire and Myles Horton. Again, one feels the resonance of Isaiah (9: 2-4): it is possible for oppressed people to "shatter the yoke that burdened them." In the face of impending crisis, one hopes that "a great light" of knowledge will dawn upon "the people who walked in darkness." Immanuel Wallerstein is contributing to the prophetic task of "mustering a host for war" (Isaiah 13: 4)-- not a war to save the capitalist world-system as we have known it. Instead, he calls the world's most committed activists and our brightest intellectuals to a battle in which we conceptualize the new world order that will replace the one that is dying. His admonition is simple in thought, very demanding in praxis. If we want a less polarized, more just, more equitable world, we must sacrifice to construct it. Or we risk having the powerful create for us a system that might be even more inequitable than the one that now exploits the world and Appalachia. Wallerstein's words echo the challenge of Isaiah (10: 2): "What will you do when called to account, when ruin from afar confronts you?" As a personal note, I wish to express my appreciation for a life of deep thought, hard work, and commitment from a dialectical messenger of both bad news and good. Immanuel, God be with you and Beatrice, with all the world's antisystemic movements, and with Appalachian activists as we make "a tumult in the mountains" (Isaiah 13:4) that will move us toward an egalitarian future.
Quotations Used from
Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, ed. Brenda Bell, John Gaventa and John Peters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
Suggestions for Additional Reading
You can access Wallerstein's bibliography and transcripts of his recent unpublished speeches and working papers at the web site of the Fernand Braudel Center. http://fbc.binghamton.edu.